Not so alien: Man will have a close encounter with spacemen that look just like us 'within 20 years'

Add to My Stories Share Humanity will encounter alien civilisations with the next two decades, a top Russian astronomer predicted yesterday.Professor Andrei Finkelstein said that ten per cent of the known planets circling suns in the galaxy resemble Earth, and if water can be found on them, then so can life.He was speaking in Moscow at an international forum dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life.

Man will have contact with aliens within 20 years, a Russian astronomer claimed yesterday. Professor Andrei Finkelstein said they would most likely resemble humans with two arms, two legs and a head - just like E.T.'The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms... Life exists on other planets and we will find it within 20 years,' said Professor Finkelstein, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Applied Astronomy Institute.As to the all-important question of how aliens will look, he added they would most likely resemble humans with two arms, two legs and a head.

More...

• Are aliens getting less camera shy? UFOs filmed above BBC building in London
• Hovering hands free: Nasa's robotic lander prototype completes autonomous test flight

He said: 'They may have different colour skin, but even we have that.'Professor Finkelstein's institute runs a programme launched in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War space race to watch for and beam out radio signals to outer space.'The whole time we have been searching for extraterrestrial civilisations, we have mainly been waiting for messages from space and not the other way,' he said.

'The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms... Life exists on other planets and we will find it within 20 years'

Professor Finkelstein's comments came on the same day a video emerged purporting to show 'a mothership and its fleet' zipping around in th! e clouds above a BBC building in central London.They were caught on camera by a passer-by, and at least one other person who can be seen filming or taking pictures on his camera phone while the video is filmed.In the footage, the cameraman runs towards the corner of Bolsover Street and Clipstone Street where two other men are already standing, gazing skywards, one of whom is using a mobile phone camera.As the camera is pointed upwards, over the BBC's Yalding House, three white dots flash across the sky at great speed in a triangle formation, they are very quickly followed by two similar sized white dots.As the camera pans down again, two people on the opposite side of the road can also been seen watching events unfold above them.Then one larger, bright and more slow moving disc-shaped white object appears, circles around briefly and zips off.